What the experts say…
WHY HIGH STANDARDS BEGIN WITH INCLUSION
Comment by JULIA POLLEY, Headteacher of Wensleydale School in North Yorkshire T
here is still a quiet assumption in education that high levels of SEND make strong outcomes harder to achieve. If we treat inclusion as a risk to be managed, rather than a core part of how a good school works, we miss the point. Inclusion is not a room, a separate policy, or something that belongs only to the SENCo or pastoral team. It should be the framework for every decision a school makes. At Wensleydale School, our recent Ofsted report said that “inclusion threads through all aspects” of the school, and judged Inclusion to be a Strong standard. That matters because we are a mainstream secondary school with a high-needs profile, including well above average numbers of pupils with SEND and education, health and care plans. The lesson from our experience is not that inclusion is easy. It is not. The lesson is that inclusion and academic ambition are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they depend on each other.
The strategies that help pupils with SEND are often the same strategies that improve learning for everyone: clear routines, predictable classrooms, careful scaffolding, high-quality teaching, strong relationships and staff who understand the children in front of them.
That is why I would encourage school leaders to stop seeing inclusion as a high-stakes risk to performance tables and start seeing it as core school infrastructure.
Designing systems that include
In practical terms, this means looking at the ordinary school day and asking: who is this working for, who is it not working for, and what are we prepared to change?
Wensleydale is a rural school with a catchment area of around 800 square kilometers. Traditional after-school clubs are not equitable for many families because of transport issues. We could have accepted that rurality limits opportunity. Instead, we built enrichment into the school day as an entitlement for every pupil.
Pupils can take part in activities such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Combined Cadet Force, sport, music, gardening and other clubs alongside their friends. That is inclusion in practice. It is not only about intervention, it’s about designing systems so pupils are not excluded from opportunity by geography, family circumstance, confidence, anxiety or need. The same principle applies in classrooms. Our pupil passports are living documents, regularly reviewed with teachers, parents and pupils. They set out targets and explain what adjustments teachers can make to help pupils access learning. They are used in lesson planning, seating plans and quality assurance, because they are only useful if they change what happens in the room. Ofsted noted that teachers use information from pupil passports to inform their teaching.
High expectations need the right scaffolding There is sometimes a fear that adapting teaching means lowering expectations. It should mean the opposite. High expectations mean giving pupils the right scaffolding to access a broad, ambitious curriculum, rather than narrowing horizons because a child needs support. The aim is not to excuse pupils from ambition, but to make ambition reachable. For some pupils that may mean targeted mainstream provision, a carefully considered nurture group, or adjustments that allow them to stay in lessons, build confidence and experience success.
That requires a whole-school culture. If inclusion sits only in an office, it fails. Teachers need training, time and practical information they can use. Leaders need to make inclusion visible in CPD, curriculum planning, behaviour systems, attendance work and staff conversations.
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www.education-today.co.uk October 2026
That does not mean adding endless new processes. Leaders have to streamline what they can and make sure the work is useful in the classroom. For us, that has meant reviewing feedback approaches so they reduce teacher workload while still helping pupils improve. It also means using CPD to build a practical, evidence-informed understanding of pupils’ needs, and making time for regular one-to-one conversations with staff about workload, progress and support.
Being outward-facing matters too. Welcoming external challenge and working with nearby schools and trusts helps keep practice sharp, honest and grounded.
Belonging is not a soft concept
Attendance and belonging are part of the same picture and we work hard to understand why a pupil is absent. This does not mean accepting poor attendance. It means addressing the barrier so pupils can return and stay. When pupils feel safe, known and connected to school, attendance improves.
Belonging is fundamental to learning. A child who feels invisible, anxious or out of place will struggle to learn effectively. A child who feels seen and included is more likely to take risks, accept help, recover from mistakes and believe they have a future.
Young people only get one chance at secondary education, and qualifications matter – but so does context. A spreadsheet will never fully capture the human context of a school.
Our Ofsted report recognised that pupils with SEND make appropriate progress from their starting points, not only in classroom subjects but also in wider skills such as speech, language and emotional regulation. It also noted that almost all pupils progress to appropriate next steps in education, employment or training.
That is what success should mean: young people leaving with qualifications, confidence, social skills and a route into the next stage of their lives.
My advice to other headteachers is simple. Do not build inclusion as a add-on; build it into the way your school works. Be outward-facing, welcome challenge, protect staff workload, know your community. Do not apologise for doing right by the children in your catchment. Inclusion is not the opposite of standards, it is one of the ways standards are raised.
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